Making It Official. I'm Retiring!

For months, I've talked about retirement on this podcast as though it were something that I might do one day.

I've talked about the money.

I've talked about identity.

I've talked about watching other people retire and wondering whether I would be ready if the opportunity ever came my way.

But what I couldn't tell you was that retirement was no longer just a hypothetical conversation for me.

The opportunity did come.

I had a decision to make.

And now that I've told everyone that I needed to tell, I can finally tell you.

I am officially retiring.

My last day at work will be October 31st.

Phew.

Saying it out loud still feels a little strange.

After more than 30 years at one company and then another nine years elsewhere, so say 40 years in the workforce, I'm preparing to close a major chapter of my life.

And for the first time in a very long time, I don't have the next chapter completely planned.

I have ideas.

I have dreams.

I definitely have a to do list.

But I don't have it all figured out.

And surprisingly, I think I'm okay with that.

Living our best life.

It's good to be alive, but it's best to truly let your spirit fly.

Celebrate the journey every single day.

Aging with grace and style in our own special way.

Hey, girl.

Welcome to Aging with Grace and Style, the podcast for women over 50 who are ready to live this season of life with confidence, purpose, and a little bit of sass.

I'm your host, Valerie Hatcher, and today we can finally have the retirement conversation I've wanted to have with you for months now.

If you've listened to the podcast for a while, you may have suspected something was going on.

Earlier this year, I recorded an episode about retirement and why I started looking at money differently.

I shared that my company had offered voluntary severance packages and that I was watching people my age take the opportunity to retire earlier than they may have originally planned.

It made me ask myself a very real question.

If the opportunity were ever offered to me, would I be financially ready to take it?

I also recorded an episode about the identity side of retirement and asked, who will you be next?

We talked about what happens when a title that has defined so much of your adult life is no longer attached to your name.

Those were honest conversations.

But there was a part of my story I wasn't able to share yet.

I wasn't simply thinking about retirement.

I was already considering a real opportunity to retire.

So today, the hypothetical part of the conversation is over.

I said yes.

For a long time, retirement felt distant.

I knew it was somewhere ahead of me, but I didn't have a circle around a date on the calendar.

I wasn't counting down the days, and I wasn't going to work every morning thinking, I cannot wait to get out of here.

That isn't my story.

I have built a career I'm proud of.

I've done meaningful work, formed lasting relationships, supported leaders, helped employees through difficult situations, and spent years doing work that challenged me and helped me grow.

So retirement wasn't something I was running toward because I desperately wanted to escape my job.

It was more like a possibility that quietly began asking for my attention.

When I saw colleagues accept voluntary severance and retire, I found myself wondering what I would do if I were given the same choice.

Would I stay because it was comfortable and familiar?

Would I be financially prepared to leave?

Would I be emotionally prepared?

And what would I do with myself if I wasn't getting up every morning to go to work?

I didn't have immediate answers to all those questions, but I noticed that whenever I asked myself about whether I would take the opportunity, my answer kept leaning toward yes.

Then the opportunity actually came.

It is one thing to imagine what you might do.

It's another thing entirely when there are documents to review, numbers to calculate, deadlines to meet, and a box waiting for you to check yes or no.

Suddenly, this wasn't a podcast topic.

This was real life, and I took the decision seriously.

I looked at the financial side.

I thought about health care.

I considered what I would be giving up and what I might gain.

I talked with people I trust.

I gave myself time to process what leaving would really mean.

In the end, I decided to take the voluntary severance and retire.

The decision didn't make itself.

I made it.

But I was able to make it because the opportunity, my preparation, and the season of my life had finally aligned.

People naturally want to know why?

Why now?

Why not work a few more years?

Why?

Why leave a stable career when I'm still capable of doing the work?

And those are fair questions.

And trust me, I've asked them of myself, too.

The simplest answer is that I recognized a good opportunity when it appeared.

We often wait for perfect clarity before making a major decision.

We want every question answered, every risk removed, and every detail of the future carefully organized.

I know I do.

But major life transitions rarely arrive that neatly packaged.

I don't know exactly what every day of my retirement will look like.

I don't know which of my ideas will grow and which ones I may decide aren't right for me at all.

What I do know is that time feels different to me now.

At 63, I don't think of time as unlimited now.

That doesn't mean I'm sitting around thinking something terrible is about to happen.

It means I understand the value of the healthy, active years in front of me.

I want to experience some ordinary Tuesdays that don't belong to a corporate calendar.

I want mornings when I can drink my coffee without immediately thinking about the first meeting of the day.

I want time to work on my home, create content, grow this podcast, explore new ideas, spend time with my family, and be present for Halo as she grows.

I have a feeling my grandma calendar will not be empty, but I also want to be careful about how I tell the story.

I am not retiring solely to become a full time grandmother.

I adore Halo and I want more time with her.

But I'm also a woman with interests, with dreams, gifts and plans of my own.

That matters to me.

Retirement is not me disappearing into everyone else's needs.

It is an opportunity to decide more intentionally how I want to use my time.

I've spent much of my adult life working with schedules, deadlines, responsibilities, and expectations.

Now I have an opportunity to build a life with more room in it.

I don't need every inch of that room filled on the first day.

I am excited about retiring, but I'm not going to pretend leaving is easy simply because it is my choice.

This is bittersweet.

My career has been more than a paycheck.

It has been a source of accomplishment, growth, relationships, and identity.

I know how to be Valerie at work.

I understand my role.

I know what people expect from me.

I've built credibility over time and I know the value I bring into a room.

There's comfort in being good at something that you've done for years.

Retirement means voluntarily stepping away from a place where I know who I am and entering a season where some of that will have to be rediscovered.

I'll miss the people.

I'll miss being part of the conversations.

I'll probably even miss solving some of the problems, although I reserve the right to deny saying that later.

There are also people I've supported for years.

Some I hired, some I inherited through organizational changes, and others I've watched grow into leadership.

Those relationships are part of what made this decision difficult.

That's why I don't think we need to force major transitions into one emotional category.

I can be grateful for my career and ready to leave it.

I can be proud of what I built and curious about who I'll be without it.

I can be excited about retirement and still feel something.

When I think about my final day, two things can be true.

This can be the right decision and still be an emotional one.

Almost immediately after I started telling people I was retiring, the questions began.

What are you going to do?

Are you going to travel?

Are you going to consult?

What's next?

And I understand why people ask.

We're accustomed to defining ourselves by what we do, but the honest answer is that I don't have my post retirement life completely figured out.

I have possibilities.

I'm considering what Valerie Hatchet Consulting could look like after decades in hr.

I have experience that could help small business owners who need practical support with leadership, performance, communication, engagement and building stronger teams.

But if I pursue consulting, I want it to fit in my life.

I don't want to retire from one demanding schedule and immediately create another one with my name on the letterhead.

I want whatever I build to be sustainable, flexible and aligned with the life I'm trying to create.

I also want more time for aging with grace and stuff.

For the last few years, I've created this podcast around a full time job, family, church, responsibilities, brand partnerships, and everything else that life brings.

Many times the podcast received whatever energy I had left after everything else was done.

I'm excited to see what might happen when my creative work isn't always competing with my corporate work.

But I'm also giving myself permission to rest.

That may be the hardest part for me.

I am very good at filling a calendar.

I can already imagine myself turning retirement into a performance review with goals, measurements, deadlines and quarterly deliverables.

That would be very on brand for an HR woman.

But I don't want to feel pressured to prove that my retirement is productive enough.

I want to discover its rhythm before I define it.

Maybe there will be consulting.

There will definitely be more content and more time with my family.

There will be opportunities that I can't see yet.

And there should also be quiet mornings, house projects, walks, coffee on the patio, and days when I'm not working toward anything measurable.

I've earned the right to let this next chapter reveal itself a little at a time.

One thing I know for certain is that retirement is going to become part of what we talk about here.

Until now, I've had to speak about some of it carefully because there were people I needed to tell personally and professionally before I shared it publicly.

Now we can have the open, honest conversations.

We can talk about preparing to leave.

We can talk about saying goodbye to people in a career that mattered.

Or we can talk about the financial and practical adjustments, the change in the daily rhythm, and the emotions that may show up after the retirement celebration is over.

We can talk about what happens when Monday morning no longer means, what it has meant for most of our adult lives.

And I'm sure we'll talk about what I get right, what surprises me, and what I completely misjudged.

I don't want to present myself as a retirement expert, standing on the other side with all the answers.

I want to bring you along.

As I experience it.

Some of you are already retired.

Some of you are counting down the days.

Some of you aren't sure you ever want or will be able to retire.

And some of you may be facing a completely different transition.

But I think there is something universal in this moment.

Eventually, most of us reach a point where the life that has been familiar begins, making room for something new.

We may not know exactly what comes next, but we can still recognize when it's time to turn the page.

I don't need a perfect answer every time someone asks, what are you going to do?

I can simply say, I'm going to find out.

This isn't a lack of direction, it's an openness to possibility.

So if you're facing a transition of your own, I want you to consider this.

Are you waiting to move forward because you believe you must have the entire next chapter plan?

Maybe your next step isn't to figure out everything that comes after the decision.

Maybe it's simply to be honest about what you already know.

I knew I was ready.

I knew the opportunity made sense.

And I knew that staying solely because it was familiar was no longer the best reason to stay.

I may not know everything I'm walking toward, but I know I'm ready to begin walking.

So there it is.

After months of carefully choosing my words and talking around what was happening behind the scenes, I can finally say it plainly.

I am retiring.

I'm excited.

I'm grateful.

I'm a little uncertain.

I'm aware that I'm leaving something significant behind, and I'm curious about the woman I will become on the other side of it.

I don't have to know exactly what comes next to know that this is the right next step.

Sometimes saying yes to a new chapter doesn't mean we know exactly what the chapter will contain.

It simply means we know that it's time to turn the page.

Now, I'm not about to become a lady of leisure tomorrow, but the countdown is officially on, and I am bringing you with me.

If you're retired approaching retirement or navigating a major transition on your own.

I would love to hear what you're feeling most right now.

Excitement, relief, uncertainty, or a little bit of everything.

You can find me on Instagram at I am Valerie Hatcher and you can catch up on previous episodes of the podcast@pod.agingwithgraceandstyle.com if this episode resonated with you, share it with another woman who is thinking about her own next chapter.

And don't forget to follow the podcast and leave a rating or review.

It helps more women find the conversations and become part of our community.

I'll see you next Tuesday.

And remember, aging is not a curse.

It is absolutely 100% a blessing.

Talk soon.

Thanks for hanging out with me today.

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Until next time, keep shining with grace, grace, style and a touch of sass.